Compassion: Listening to the Cries of the World

Christina Feldman

Compassion in the face of pain, anguish, or unspeakable evil often produces confusion and bewilderment: How can someone endure such unjust suffering with such calm? Wouldn’t it be more natural, and more proper, to not be calm at all? In Compassion, Christina Feldman draws over 30 years of experience as a Buddhist to explain how ordinary people are able to use compassion to overcome negative feelings like tragedy, pain, and terror. Feldman first examines compassion itself, using Buddhist texts and real-life stories to explain precisely what this strange force is, and argues that it is the most precious of all gifts. Feldman then proceeds to show, in six separate chapters, how compassion can be used in the face of adversity, mapping out meditations and strategies that can overcome the dark thoughts that everyone experiences. Compassion is for anyone who has ever felt helpless in our own turbulent, uncertain times.